Saturday, August 31, 2013

I just brought home 5 dozen ear of corn to freeze. Once my cup of tea is finished, I have work to do! It used to be cheaper to freeze corn for the winter. Now I freeze it more for the taste than for the savings. Bet those itty bitty ants will just love it when I start shooting corn juice everywhere! BTW, I appreciate all the suggestions you wonderful crafters have made to assist me with the itty bitty ants. If they weren't so itty bitty, I might put a drop of glue on them and use them for card embellishments!

Friday, August 30, 2013

Most of you have probably seen this adorable digi cat from 2 Cute Ink. It's the image displayed on their badge, on their blog, and on a lot of other blogs. But please, don't click on the link because they have the most adorable fall fox image displayed on a card. I am going to have to go back and make a purchase myself. It's just 2 Cute!!!

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Please bear with me for a moment while I get something off my chest. I don't mean I literally need to remove lunch particles, a creepy crawly, or other unwanted article from my person, but I do have something that is bothering me. In a way, my problem is of the creepy, crawly category. I am talking about those teeny, tiny sugar ants that have appeared in my kitchen, more specifically in the microwave oven above the stove. First of all, the microwave is clean, spotless, free of anything even a teeny, tiny ant mighty find as sustenance. And yet, when I open the door there are always a few ants inside. I'd simply wipe them out and then use the appliance. After several days of this, I decided I wasn't going to do that, I was just going to nuke the little buggers. Here's where the disappointment comes into the picture. I was hoping they'd pop like popcorn, or maybe jump around like water on a hot skillet, and at the very least, DIE! But nothing. Zero. Nada. I opened the door and they were still just on walk about in my microwave. You can cook a fish, a hot dog, veggies in my microwave, but not teeny, tiny, annoying sugar ants. I needed to share that with all of you. I knew you'd understand.

Now, today's card.....This card was created using A.J.’s Digi Globe by Amanda Marks, a piece of junk mail that came with my credit card, a piece of black and white DP (which will make you dizzy if you look at it too long), a die cut from the new CTMH cricut cartridge, Artbooking, CTMH stamp "live life", some bling, CTMH Trinkets Wooden Shapes, and some zigzag stitching on the sewing machine.

Below are 2 cards I made this morning at Joyce's open house.
CTMH has a new cricut cartridge which is responsible for the cuts that make up this 4 layer card. All we did was glue it together.

And for the month of September CTMH has a pretty sweet deal which lets you get 3 stamp sets for $10 with a $50 purchase. The stamps used on this card are from 2 of the special sets. The 3rd set is an alphabet set, upper and lower case letters.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Sometimes my brain just won't turn off and I was up most of the night. I dropped the sugar bowl and made myself a big mess to clean up, caught up on my online scrabble games, made this card and then this stupid poem started forming in my head. I hope you enjoy it as much as I would have enjoyed a little sleep!

Monday, August 26, 2013

When I came downstairs this morning and looked out the back door, there were 4 sets of mama birds with baby birds flitting around in our tree - cardinals, eastern blue birds, wrens, and downy woodpeckers. How cute! Of course, when I got my camera and opened the door

(as quietly as possible),

they all flapped off, not terribly gracefully.

And my daughter-in-law sent us the cutest pictures of my grandsons on their first school day.

Tip Top Tuesday Challenge - use at least 2 things starting with you initials ("d" designer paper, dragon digi and "b" banner, blue/green cardstock, and there is a little butterfly, too)TIP: Want to mist your card but don't have the right ink color? Try jello gelatin powder mixed with water.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Actually it is the theme for the current Cards in Envy Challenge. I just picked up 2 Inkadinkadoo sets at a discount store and both have birds. So I used one of the images for this card:

(When I stamped 'thinking of you' on the white piece, I got some ink where I didn't really want it. So I blocked the sentiment and then carefully added sections of the main image to hide the whoopsie.)

Thursday, August 22, 2013

I found this digi image of cute Chinese lanterns with sentiment on the Avery Elle blog (it's a freebie). I printed it twice so I could cut out and pop the lanterns. I also cut the sentiment from the image so I could place it below the lanterns. The green and yellow CS pieces are scored on all 4 sides. Yeah, top and bottom scores don't show on the photo - sorry. The glittery piece behind the orange frame is a scrap of vinyl Elaine shared with all of us at card class. Thanks, Girlfriend.

Ooooo .... it's getting pretty dark outside for 10:30am. Hope DH doesn't get too wet on the golf course. Come back again tomorrow. My grandsons are coming later this afternoon, so I know we'll be crafting. They really enjoyed the marshmallow toothpick buildings we made last week. At least they enjoyed the marshmallows!

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

I whacked my little toe on the nightstand while making the bed yesterday morning! Must be why I have back and blue on my mind. It does make a pretty color combination for making cards.

This card follows the sketch and is my entry for the current Avery Elle AEI 'heart' U August Challenge.
The framed sentiment on this card is a free digi from Avery Elle which I printed and fussy cut. After masking the inside oval, I used a dauber to color the outer frame. To make the patterned background paper, I inked the inside of the embossing folder before inserting the paper and running it through my Cuttlebug. I hope you can see the strip of black self-adhesive glitter tape I added to the embossed black strip. It took me about 5 minutes to get the backing off that tape!

With the right inside sentiment, I'm thinking I'll use this as an Anniversary card. But I think it would make a nice birthday card, too.

I did turn it around a bit so you could read the words on the little banners, pieces of an old report card. I thought it appropriate for a wonderful young teacher who is having a birthday at the end of the month.

I wish I had embossed the 'Happy Birthday' so it popped a bit more. Maybe I'll be brave and go back and do that. Best put my glasses on first!

And now that I look at it, I might add a swirl of black gems, too.

Am I the only one who does that - post a card, and then go back and change it up???

A Gem of a Challenge #93 - Punch It Out (I punched it out all right! I used a McGill punch for the patterned aqua circle and had to push so hard I put the heel of my hand right through the plastic on the top of the punch. Not such a good thing.)